Facade project
Facade Project
A partnership formed in 2011 between the La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre (VAC) and the City of Greater Bendigo enabled the thirteen metre-wide facade of the VAC to become a public exhibition space and form part of the VAC's annual exhibition program.
In 2012 a national competition was again held, inviting submissions from artists for a new work to replace Jenny Pollak's Threshold.
The winner of the 2012 Facade Project competition, which includes exhibition of the winning image for 12 months and an artist's fee of $3000, was Sydney based artist Owen Leong [PDF71KB] with his work Tidal Skin.
Tidal Skin is a new series of photographic works which takes ocean tides and shapeshifters as its point of departure. Transforming into hybrid humans and creatures of the sea, each individual bears wounds, cuts, scratches and eyes that bleed a strange white fluid, to explore the mutability of bodies and identities.
Developed while on a prestigious Asialink Visual Arts Residency, artist Owen Leong spent several months immersed in the diversity of Tokyo city’s subcultural groups. In a society often perceived as systematic and regimented, the artist was inspired by the transformative power of subcultural groups to express unique individual identities. He was also influenced by the power and mystery of the ocean surrounding Japan, rich with history, mythology and symbolism.
In this series, the artist furthers his artistic investigation of the body and skin as a surface across which social and cultural forces are transmitted. Leong uses tidal phenomena within systems of gravity, time and space as a metaphor for endless change. Tidal Skin visualises members of Tokyo’s subculture communities in a process of elemental change, transmutation and transformation.
